Nicaraguan Must Leave, Had Worked As A Nurse

March 31, 1985|United Press International

OKLAHOMA CITY — Immigration officials have ordered a Nicaraguan woman to leave the United States this week after she worked as a hospital nurse without pay for 10 months while awaiting word on her application to stay in the country.

``I feel like bureaucratic procedures are worse than what I was aware of,`` says Karmaria Forbes Kuehn, 23, who came to the United States in 1980 because she wanted to become a doctor.

Kuehn has worked without pay since June because hospital officials in Guymon, Okla., were unsure whether she could receive a salary without first having a visa from the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services.

She said the only money she has received has been about $300 a month in donations raised by the ladies` auxiliary at Memorial Hospital in Guymon.

At a March 4 meeting in Oklahoma City, INS officials told her she had to leave the country by April 4, despite receiving repeated assurances earlier from the INS that her paperwork was in order and was being processed.

Kuehn said she filed an application for a practical training visa with the Oklahoma City office in June 1984 and that the only contact she had with the INS was when she was notified by mail of the March 4 meeting.

Max Nolan, the deputy district director for INS in Dallas, said he was unfamiliar with the case, but added that Kuehn and her husband, a student at Panhandle State University in Guymon, should be ``grateful`` for the 10-month delay in processing her application.

``They should be grateful the 10 months lapse was in there because they have had time to get married,`` Nolan said.

Kuehn came to the United States in 1980 and lived with an aunt in Illinois, then studied English before attending St. John`s College, a Lutheran school in Winfield, Kan., where she graduated with honors in 1984.

Kuehn says that if she is deported, she will not return to her native country because ``it`s just too difficult to get out of Nicaragua.``